Hugh Hefner is upset about a rumor that the Playboy mansion smells like urine. He admits his life "reads like bad fiction," but he's not a sex slave rapist in a palace of poop. Just a horny old control freak.

With the news that Hugh Hefner, 84, became engaged to his 24-year-old girlfriend, Crystal Harris,…
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But Hef would like you to know that the Playboy mansion is not a squalid hellhole smeared with the feces and the urine of pampered purse dogs. You think a man capable of training women to do this…

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* On the charge that he paid each his girlfriends, out of safe in his bedroom, $1,000 a week in cash: "That part is true. If you write it and make it sound sleazy, that's easy to do. But the girls got a clothing allowance."

* On the claim that he imposed a strict 9 p.m. curfew, by which time all his girlfriends had to be at home or else: "That was also true—and widely publicized. It wasn't a big secret." Why the curfew? Hef laughs: "So they wouldn't be running around on me!"

* On the claim that he refused to wear a condom: "I think one of the ways that you resolve that problem is to have sex with people who don't have sexually transmitted diseases." That claim, in other words, appears to be true.

…couldn't also train a dog to pee outside? On the other hand, Hef's version of the Playboy mansion is ultimately identical to Izabella's, but with better janitorial services and more sobriety. (In Izabella's version, she consoles herself with quaaludes.) As if the image a strange old man living out his daddy fantasies, grunting weakly in a cavernous halls of silicone and plastic weren't sobering enough, already.

Let us close with a quote from the man of the silk robe himself:

"The strange reality is that I'm more of a target today than probably at any other time in my life in terms of attention from young women."

And why would that be?

"It's a good question. I think it has to with the curious nature of iconic celebrity."

Hugh Hefner: Following his penis into the zeitgeist, since 1953. [The Daily Beast, image via Getty]